


The Half That's Lost

by ADarkenedSinner



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: I really am a horrible person, M/M, So much angst, Torturing Steve Rogers is my jam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:25:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADarkenedSinner/pseuds/ADarkenedSinner
Summary: Needless to say, Steve isn't taking Bucky's cryo-nap very well.





	The Half That's Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrattyBarnes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrattyBarnes/gifts).



> Written to "It's Been Awhile" by Staind

Sleep eludes me just as it always does nowadays. There’s not much of a point trying to chase after it, though. Just like there’s not much of a point of anything anymore.

My footsteps take me down a memorised path, bare feet kissing the chill marbled floors as I shamble along. The guards are used to my appearance at this point. They’re not alarmed by the fact that I’m clad only in flannel pajama bottoms, or that my hair is an unruly mess that partially obscures my dull blue-green eyes. This is a commonplace occurrence to them at this point. 

There’s not even pity in the glances cast my way anymore. Only long suffering acceptance that this is where I need to be right now, the same as every night preceding this one.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but my heart breaks even more than it already has when I approach the cryostasis chamber. It feels like someone punched a damn hole in my chest and for a moment my breath is stolen from my lungs, just like those asthma attacks I used to have before I became what I am today. God, I hate seeing him like this. Frozen in sleep, so close to me yet so fucking far away. 

But he’s so damn beautiful that I can’t keep my eyes off of him. 

Just like he’s always been. 

The bitter chill of the glass seeps into my skin as I rest my forehead against the chamber, which fogs with condensation as I breathe out a soft “Hey, handsome.” If I was still the old me, I probably would have made some crack and called him Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. But that man died a long time ago in the waters of the Arctic, and then again when he lost what he loved the most once more.

Between those two points of time, I was simply surviving. I fought when it was needed, trained for hours upon hours each day, just for something to pass the time. My life had little meaning. I just...existed. But that’s to be expected when the other half of your soul is taken from you, right?

But then he came back. My Bucky. And though he didn’t recognise me, it was still /him/ and there was no way in hell I was going to lose him again. I developed tunnel vision, I pushed away the tenuous friendships I’d cultivated while I tried to track him down, hell I even defied 117 countries for this man because somewhere deep inside of me I actually thought that we could go back to the way things were. 

That I’d be whole again.

That in this time we found ourselves in, we could live freely and out in the open instead of hiding what we were to each other.

And we were so close. So /fucking/ close.

But then he decided to leave me yet again.

A quiet whimper escapes me as the memory of that day flashes into my head, when he told me of his decision to go into cryo until T’Challa’s scientists could find a way to get the trigger words out of his head. The arguing and pleading that followed went on for hours into the night until I had no choice but to agree. He was going to do it anyway, so I thought it’d be better if he thought that he had my blessing. My lips formed the words that he wanted to hear, though I’m sure he could see the lie in my eyes as I said them. 

We spent the remaining hours of that night clinging to each other as we made love for the first time in over seventy years. It was every bit as sweet as I had remembered, if not sweeter. He had used every lingering kiss, every nip of teeth, and every prolonged thrust to imprint upon me without words just how much he loved me and I had used the same to let him know just how much I would miss him. 

Perhaps it was because of this reunion of bodies and souls that allowed me to give him a soft smile as the scientists prepped him for cryo the next day, to let him lay in the chamber without any further protest. Bucky had softened me up in the way he always knew how to, and it wasn’t until a week after the glass lid of the chamber slid closed that I started hating him for it.

My forehead connects with the glass in a series of thumps as I bang my head against it, words tearing out of my throat in a harsh whisper. “Goddamn you, you selfish bastard. How could you leave me again? What the hell am I supposed to do with myself now?” They’re the same questions I ask every night, some illogical part of me somehow expecting him to wake up and give me answers.

Because I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t leave while he was here, knowing he was vulnerable and alone. I know he had expected me to go on with my life as I had before but knowing that he was alive and /here/ made being anywhere else an impossibility.

Besides, there was nothing to go back to, considering that I was a fugitive (another price I paid for loving this man) and the rest of the team was scattered to the four winds. 

So I’d become a permanent fixture within the walls of the palace, resigned to live in a constant state of limbo. And though it was driving me mad that I couldn’t truly be with him in his current state, at least I could be with him in some way. I could still see him. See that he’s alive and that he’s really here; not just a figment of my imagination. I could still talk to him. Well. At him. I could still tell him how much I love him, every day.

It’s how it’s always been. Where Bucky goes, I go. Until the end of the line. And that line hasn’t ended, it’s only been paused.

With a shuddering sigh, my lips press to the glass before I sink to my knees, a mixture of grief and devotion in my eyes as they gaze up at his slumbering face. “I love you more than anything, Buck. I’ll be here when you wake up.” I promise, as I always do, before curling up on the cold marble floor. The guards will be kind when they wake me up in the morning, they always have been.

And then I’ll get to live another day in this half existence, somehow trying to keep the glimmer of hope within me from dying out completely.


End file.
